Key takeaways ✨
- Purchasers don’t simply need emails—they need higher emails. At the moment’s company work isn’t nearly writing copy or hitting ship. It’s about delivering nice storytelling in an e-mail that’s accessible, interactive, and focused to the appropriate subscribers.
- E-mail approvals are nonetheless the most important bottleneck for companies. Whether or not you’re working with a solo founder or a Fortune 500 advertising and marketing staff, chasing down suggestions can kill momentum to your e-mail advertising and marketing campaigns.
- The appropriate instruments make the distinction. From pre-send testing to spam checks and analytics, companies that use Litmus save time, shorten the approval course of, and sync their work throughout consumer ESPs—making it simpler to ship top-tier work for each consumer, each time.
Digital advertising and marketing companies have heard it a thousand occasions earlier than: e-mail advertising and marketing is useless.
However you already know higher. Take into account that:
- 35% of firms see an ROI of 36:1 or extra from e-mail advertising and marketing.
- 58% of promoting groups ship emails weekly or a number of occasions per week.
- 76% of promoting groups produce emails in a single week or much less.
E-mail remains to be (nonetheless!) probably the most highly effective channels you may optimize to your shoppers—which is precisely why they name you for assist.
The commonest e-mail sort, based on the companies we surveyed for the 2025 State of E-mail Report, is newsletters (68%). And with almost 1 in 5 firms working with freelancers or companies to get their emails out the door, e-mail advertising and marketing remains to be a top-tier service you may provide your shoppers.
On this submit, we’ll speak by means of agency-specific concerns on e-mail workflows, greatest practices, instruments, and extra so you may ship the very best package deal to your shoppers—whether or not you’re a marketing campaign supervisor of 1 or an enterprise-level company.
Desk of contents
Company e-mail made simple
Automate testing, centralize approvals, and save hours on e-mail manufacturing for each consumer marketing campaign with Litmus.
When shoppers belief you with the creation of their e-mail campaigns, a rigorous evaluate of marketing campaign design and content material is crucial within the artistic course of. Your emails should exit typo-free, with the appropriate copy, photographs and call-to-action, designed and formatted to encourage opens, clicks, and conversions wherever your shoppers’ subscribers see them.
In 2024, 62% of e-mail groups wanted two weeks or extra to provide an e-mail. That quantity has been slashed to simply 6%—groups have gotten extra environment friendly, however automation and AI have lastly caught as much as e-mail marketer’s wants.
As an company, all of the automation on the planet can’t pressure a consumer to lastly say sure to an e-mail. Or get rid of imprecise and meaningless suggestions like, “Make it pop.” 🫠 Marketing campaign-building in an company setting is a collaborative effort, bringing collectively the talents and know-how of your inner groups to assist your shoppers attain their objectives.
Technique and temporary alignment
In line with our State of E-mail Workflows Report, 35% of e-mail entrepreneurs report that amassing suggestions is the most important blocker to getting an e-mail produced and despatched.
A strong briefing course of will get forward of this by aligning inner and exterior stakeholders forward of time round your strategic objectives for the e-mail marketing campaign, how it is going to be produced, who will probably be assigned the content material creation, and the way you’ll measure your success.
Whereas e-mail advertising and marketing will be simply as a lot an artwork as a science, slightly knowledge can go a good distance along with your strategic decision-making. Utilizing instruments like Validity BriteVerify for segmentation and phone verification helps determine precisely who this artistic is for, why you’re doing it, and what success appears to be like like. A Black Friday e-mail for a retail consumer is totally completely different from an in-depth e-newsletter for a B2B tech model.
Copy and design collaboration
From there, it’s time to herd the cats produce the e-mail. Whether or not you go copy first or design first, probably the most helpful a part of the e-mail is the message you select to ship.
That’s why content material creation has turn into probably the most coveted abilities for a marketing campaign supervisor’s staff, with 30% of entrepreneurs prioritizing it for his or her new hires. “By doubling down on content material creation, manufacturers are specializing in what really drives connection: tales, worth, and relevance to the shopper. It’s in the end the content material that converts somebody from an informal model follower right into a loyal buyer,” says Rohan Bhat, Sr. Advertising Supervisor at Adobe.
The second most vital talent? AI literacy, which is able to turn into extra vital as companies are requested to do extra with much less. The important thing with utilizing AI instruments like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini is that you simply’re not dropping what shoppers rent you to do—the storytelling—in favor of productiveness. You don’t have to completely outsource your artistic work to generative AI, both. Litmus Assistant, for instance, can optimize your copy by suggesting compelling topic traces and duplicate alternate options in numerous tones.
However we all know that AI in e-mail is right here to remain: 29% of e-mail entrepreneurs consider that AI-driven content material era and analytics would be the greatest change in e-mail advertising and marketing this yr…perhaps even this decade.
Construct and modular coding
Subsequent is constructing the e-mail to deliver it to life. Once we talked to e-mail entrepreneurs for the State of E-mail Report, we have been shocked to search out that solely 28% of firms report that they use a centralized design template system to take care of model consistency throughout e-mail sorts, though e-mail templates can save time and inventive vitality for everybody.
Even much less widespread is utilizing a set of modular coding snippets and partials that enable e-mail builders to maneuver extra rapidly with out being caught in a set template. It helps transfer manufacturing considerably extra rapidly, with 77% of respondents to one other latest survey seeing “important enchancment” utilizing modular growth methods.
With Litmus Builder, you may simply code HTML emails and save snippets and partials so you need to use them later. As a result of Litmus companions with all the main ESPs, it’s also possible to use Litmus Extension to pop out and in of your consumer’s ESP with out lacking Builder’s extra superior performance.
Testing, proofing, and consumer approval
That is the place even probably the most meticulously deliberate course of falls aside. With each inner and exterior stakeholders concerned, the evaluate and approval course of wanted to finalize the work is simply too usually an inefficient assortment of particular person actions.
First, somebody in your staff wants to check and proofread the e-mail, which executed manually means sending round a bunch of notifications on Slack or Groups asking somebody with an Android or Yahoo! Mail to check out the e-mail. That may take hours with out a instrument like Litmus Testing to see what your e-mail appears to be like like in 100+ shoppers and gadgets earlier than you ship—and that’s earlier than the modifications even begin. We’ve all had shoppers that determine they need the alternative of no matter was within the temporary on the final minute (thank goodness for billable hours.)
This may be why amassing suggestions stays the most important bottleneck on this course of. You possibly can automate testing and QA with instruments like Litmus Testing, however you may’t automate that magical “appears to be like good” e-mail out of your consumer. That’s the place Litmus Proof is available in. It lets you centralize suggestions in a single place, utilizing a visible format that’s simple so that you can handle feedback, tag stakeholders, and observe approvals in a single place.
Ship with complete confidence
Preview emails in 100+ shoppers, catch errors, and guarantee accessibility. Reduce QA time in half. Due to Litmus Take a look at.
Launch, reporting, and optimization
After getting the ultimate “okay” from the consumer and your staff, you may really hit ship. The most well-liked ESP to do this with is Mailchimp total, adopted by Salesforce Advertising Cloud (by the way, additionally the preferred ESP for companies, seemingly as a result of it’s acquired each potential bell and whistle a consumer may ask for!)
However that’s not the top of the e-mail manufacturing workflow. Now it’s as much as your staff to observe how the e-mail carried out. Consider engagement metrics like opens, click-through charges, and skim time, or conversion metrics like purchases with the built-in instruments out of your ESP or add-on instruments like Litmus Analytics or Everest Engagement Analytics. Then, monitor your deliverability post-send with Validity Everest.
Superior e-mail greatest practices companies can ship (and promote) to shoppers
Your shoppers employed you to construct their emails as a result of they wished one thing greater than what they may do themselves. You’re already juggling a number of shoppers (and perhaps a number of ESPs, yeesh!) and nonetheless they ask for extra, extra, extra.
These superior e-mail advertising and marketing greatest practices can present your shoppers simply how highly effective e-mail will be, with the additional *one thing* that makes them re-up their retainer repeatedly:
1. Assist shoppers accumulate zero-party knowledge
Google might not have phased out third-party cookies in spite of everything, however they’re nonetheless considerably much less helpful than they was with elevated consideration to knowledge privateness. In case your shoppers depend on this sort of knowledge for his or her focusing on efforts, they’re going to overlook out.
That’s why zero-party knowledge is so vital.
Zero-party knowledge is explicitly given to you by your viewers, by means of conversations by way of e-mail, chat, or by means of kinds and surveys.
Your shoppers already accumulate this knowledge—issues like names, addresses, and demographic info—however it could be in numerous programs or arduous to search out. Advise your shoppers to get their knowledge so as in the event that they need to benefit from any digital advertising and marketing program, however particularly e-mail.
There’s a cause “know your viewers” continues to be nice advertising and marketing recommendation. When you’re undecided the place to start out, go for the “whereas I’ve you…” tactic. For instance, if somebody needs to opt-in for a back-in-stock e-mail, you may ask them their measurement or coloration preferences or their cellphone quantity to opt-in to texting. Or in the event that they’re seeking to speak to a gross sales rep, you may ask for extra detailed details about their firm measurement, job title, or companies. All of this provides as much as extra info you need to use to personalize the subscriber expertise (and re-target them on different channels.)
2. Make your emails interactive
A part of what makes e-mail advertising and marketing so labor-intensive is that you simply’re not simply constructing one model of any given e-mail. You’re constructing a number of to fulfill completely different segments of an viewers, iterating on copy by persona, or swapping out items of an e-mail based mostly on upcoming occasions. 44% of entrepreneurs say they construct 2-3 variations of each e-mail, on common, whereas 18% construct 4-6 variations.
What if it could possibly be a lot, a lot simpler to give your shoppers personalization at scale?
As an alternative of attempting to construct new drafts from scratch for each phase, tailor your content material to particular subscribers with interactive components. Whereas 95% of e-mail entrepreneurs we polled for the State of E-mail Improvements Report stated they did some form of personalization, solely 3% add dynamic components into their campaigns.
Wait, what? Dynamic content material is straightforward to drag off with the appropriate instrument? ( 👋) You possibly can go approach past [first name], although in fact that’s a terrific place to start out. As an alternative, take into consideration:
- Curiosity indicators: show dwell click on totals so you may construct buzz round sure product gadgets, articles, or no matter your consumer must characteristic.
- Countdown timers: add a way of urgency and pleasure for occasions or retail drops.
- Reside polls: subscribers can select their favourite and get real-time outcomes from different subscribers.
- Scratch-offs: create a way of caprice by giving subscribers one thing to disclose in-the-moment.
Right here’s what Litmus Personalize appears to be like like in motion:
Drive engagement with dynamic content material
Design emails with dwell polls, personalised photographs, scratch-offs, and extra with Litmus Personalize. No coding expertise required.
3. Handle deliverability at scale
Do you know 1 in 6 advertising and marketing emails by no means attain the inbox? When your shoppers rent you, they’re relying on outcomes. But when your carefully-designed emails by no means make it to the inbox, it would all have been for nothing.
Test in case your shoppers:
- Arrange their e-mail authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC accurately. Bonus factors in the event that they’ve added BIMI to this record—few firms take the time to set it up, which is one in every of a number of explanation why we at all times advocate it. Doing so provides a verified checkmark and/or a emblem within the inbox, giving them prime model visibility.
- Cleaned their e-mail record lately, eliminating widespread errors like typos and phased out subscribers that don’t recurrently have interaction along with your emails.
Up to date their emails to incorporate a one-click unsubscribe hyperlink, which is required by the brand new Gmail and Yahoo pointers.
Validity Everest can monitor deliverability at scale for a number of shoppers, alerting you of potential points with their e-mail lists (look out for spam traps!), watching spam complaints and unsubscribes, and serving to you construct a strong sender status that maximizes their probabilities of touchdown within the inbox.
4. Spend money on accessibility
It’s unhappy that this tip goes within the “superior” part, as a result of accessible e-mail design is a primary tenet of sending nice e-mail. However after we requested entrepreneurs, solely 47% of firms did any primary accessibility greatest practices like alt textual content of their emails. As an company, you are able to do higher.
To make your emails extra accessible, take note of your visible and coding decisions:
- Make your emails mobile-friendly—not simply with responsive coding however by making CTA textual content tappable and your emails scannable.
- Use a excessive coloration distinction between your textual content and the background coloration that meet the WCAG distinction ratio pointers for colorblindness.
- Alt tags on each picture for display screen reader accessibility that truly describe what the picture is, as an alternative of one thing generic like “app retailer.”
- Semantic components all through your code to delineate textual content hierarchy and assist display screen readers make sense of your tables.
“Accessibility in advertising and marketing is not only a greatest follow. In the US, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (ADA) has lengthy established the authorized basis for accessible digital experiences. Quickly, the European Accessibility Act (EAA), set to take impact in June 2025, will mandate that companies make services— together with digital advertising and marketing content material—accessible to these with disabilities. Entrepreneurs ought to take proactive steps by auditing present supplies, making use of accessibility greatest practices, leveraging accessibility instruments, coaching groups, and staying knowledgeable as requirements evolve.“
Man Hanson
VP of Buyer Engagement at Validity
5. Present, don’t inform, with consumer e-mail campaigns
Each consumer involves you with a unique maturity degree for his or her e-mail advertising and marketing. Some could also be utilizing WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop components; others might have e-mail devs on their staff with sturdy opinions about how they code their tables.
Assist them perceive why you’re recommending sure copy, design, or coding decisions with visible instruments like Litmus Testing—to allow them to see precisely what their e-mail appears to be like like on 100+ e-mail shoppers and gadgets. That approach you’ll by no means have a consumer who makes use of Outlook or an historical iPhone pinging you within the wee hours asking why their e-mail appears to be like bizarre.
Further concerns for enterprise shoppers
Enterprise e-mail advertising and marketing is remarkably like campaigns for smaller firms, with one main exception: The enterprise e-mail approval workflow. (Cue the horror film violins.)
Past the same old asks from shoppers like consideration to element, unbelievable visuals and storytelling, and arranged supply of belongings, you need to negotiate layers of approvals from a number of groups. After which hope that somebody you’ve by no means heard of received’t leap into Salesforce Advertising Cloud and fiddle along with your e-mail simply as you’re about to hit ship.
…And you need to do that with a degree of safety and governance that enterprise firms want, for a number of enterprise models and departments, each single day.
On your enterprise shoppers, be sure you’re:
- Selecting an e-mail service supplier that may deal with enterprise-level workloads. Most enterprise manufacturers we surveyed use Salesforce Advertising Cloud (46%), which can be the preferred company choose.
- Aligning all stakeholders on e-mail cadence forward of time, and setting a transparent “final name” for feedback and approvals earlier than an e-mail ship goes out.
- Working with authorized and/or IT groups to ensure your knowledge administration follows top-tier safety pointers, both by implementing protocols like SOCI or SOCII to your personal databases or by acquiring logins to their setups
- Consolidating approvals and suggestions into one place like Litmus Proof, the place you get a visible rundown of all feedback and might observe approvals as you obtain them to maneuver the method by means of key steps extra rapidly
Enterprise e-mail, simplified
Energy your enterprise e-mail technique with superior testing, automation, and safety to scale effortlessly.
Pricing and packaging e-mail companies profitably
You possibly can package deal e-mail advertising and marketing companies in three foremost methods:
- Consulting/advisory companies: Monetizing your strategic experience, delivering on segmentation, personalization, deliverability, and cross-channel advertising and marketing technique.
- E-mail advertising and marketing companies: Hours spent drafting, constructing, and testing an e-mail for deployment, in addition to monitoring A/B checks or different analytics.
- Single companies as merchandise: As an alternative of working per e-mail marketing campaign, provide one or two areas of the e-mail manufacturing course of, like testing/QA or e-mail record hygiene.
- Single e-mail campaigns as merchandise: As an alternative of specializing in a single space, you may provide a sure sort of e-mail to create. For instance, 68% of the companies we surveyed for the 2025 State of E-mail Report stated newsletters have been the highest e-mail sort they ship.
This may be hourly (billing towards hours labored), retainer-based (a set price in the beginning of the month that covers sure companies advert nauseam), or value-based (fee for one-off tasks from begin to end).
You’ll must determine which mannequin resonates probably the most with you and your skillset. Most entrepreneurs exterior of e-mail don’t perceive the nuances between the completely different e-mail manufacturing steps, or why an e-mail developer may not have any expertise writing e-mail copy and vice-versa.
Case snapshot: how three companies win with Litmus
It’s one factor to know what a instrument can do, and one other to see it in motion. We requested just a few actual companies to stroll us by means of precisely how they use Litmus to point out their shoppers the facility of e-mail advertising and marketing:
1. How DEG, Linked by Isobar creates higher e-mail, quicker
DEG, Linked by Isobar is a full-service company specializing in digital advertising and marketing methods for the final 20 years. Their staff of Marketing campaign Specialists sends almost 3 billion emails over the course of 1 / 4 on behalf of their shoppers—and each single one must be good. That’s why they use Litmus with Salesforce Advertising Cloud (SFMC) to construct, take a look at, and ship pixel-perfect, correct e-mail, quicker.
With Litmus, their staff has two choices: They’ll use the Litmus Chrome Extension to run an automatic pre-send Litmus Take a look at proper alongside SFMC’s Content material Builder, saving time and the trouble of switching between instruments. Or, they’ll code instantly in Litmus Builder and use ESP Syncing to attach with SFMC, guaranteeing their code is at all times updated.
“We love how the platform is designed for enterprise-level companies. We will have all of our shoppers in a single place and simply and securely leap between accounts,” says Adam MacDonald, Director of Marketing campaign Administration, DEG, Linked by Isobar. Litmus helps them deal with a excessive sending quantity whereas sustaining an accuracy charge of 99.5%—in order that they proceed to construct belief with their shoppers by producing constantly nice work.
MacDonald provides, “With the Litmus Salesforce Advertising Cloud integration, we’ve reduce our e-mail QA time by over 50%, giving us time to focus our efforts on segmentation and different strategic marketing campaign growth alternatives.”
2. How ThomasARTS streamlines the approval course of
Utah-based digital promoting and advertising and marketing company ThomasARTS helps a broad vary of shoppers with e-mail advertising and marketing companies, creating and sending hundreds of thousands of emails each week. Naturally, every a kind of emails should be good. So, a radical evaluate and approval course of is vital for the staff and its consumer operations.
It was the evaluate course of that saved the staff from assembly their full potential. “Our evaluate and approval course of was tedious—and value loads of valuable time,” stated Jon Gerber, advertising and marketing automation director. This was an inefficient system of emailing, downloading, screenshotting, and importing to view, touch upon, or recommend modifications on message drafts or mock-ups.
That’s why ThomasARTS put Litmus Proof, a single, centralized instrument for offering suggestions, on the middle of their evaluate course of. Now, all reviewers mark up and touch upon the identical e-mail draft inside Litmus. Reviewers can reply quicker and all staff members can see one another’s feedback.
The end result? ThomasARTS was in a position to reduce its proofing course of in half with out sacrificing accuracy or sturdy suggestions. “Litmus Proof has helped us enhance our workflow considerably. The flexibility to ask everybody into one atmosphere and to see all suggestions and feedback in a single place actually made us understand how a lot of a ache level this was for us earlier than.”
3. How Altos simplifies their e-mail workflow
Altos offers bespoke digital advertising and marketing options, the place e-mail advertising and marketing is on the core of their companies. “If you create distinctive, bespoke, artisanal work for shoppers, testing each e-mail you create is a should,” stated Joe Savitch, Advertising Supervisor at Altos. “We consider our shoppers’ success is a mirrored image of our personal.”
Devoted subaccounts assist Altos arrange reviewers and guarantee everybody has the suitable degree of entry to every mission. Litmus Proof, their centralized hub for e-mail evaluate and collaboration, lets them tag reviewers and observe approvals to ensure they hit each deadline.
As soon as emails are authorized, Altos makes positive to totally take a look at them with automated pre-send checks in Litmus E-mail Previews, Litmus Take a look at, and Spam Testing to allow them to create a terrific expertise for each subscriber and produce enterprise outcomes for his or her shoppers.
Including these instruments into their workflow elevated their e-mail accuracy by 25%, improved total deliverability by 20%, and diminished the time it takes to create an e-mail by 10%, giving them extra time to be strategic advertising and marketing companions for his or her shoppers. Stated Savitch, “We knew we would have liked Litmus to have the ability to present our clients the true worth of e-mail. Litmus offers us the strategic perception, accountability, and degree of perfection we have to drive success for our shoppers.”
Learn how to get began with Litmus as an company
Constructing, testing, and iterating on tons of of emails throughout a number of manufacturers could be a big headache for even probably the most proficient marketing campaign specialist. Litmus makes it simple to juggle completely different ESPs, e-mail methods, and model voices by supplying you with instruments to construct, take a look at, and approve your emails in a single place.
See why companies love Litmus: litmus.com/business/companies →
From idea to ship, quicker
Reduce e-mail growth time in half with Litmus. Create on-brand emails rapidly, with or with out HTML abilities.
